


holes found in my armor

by hackedoracle (jumpforjo)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Trans Akechi Goro, Trans Male Character, basically it's set the night of 11/21 all in akechi perspective, content warnings in notes, perceived character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpforjo/pseuds/hackedoracle
Summary: Shooting Akira - no - murdering Akira, does not feel like a victory. It doesn’t feel like a step towards his revenge and salvation.alternatively, goro akechi and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 6
Kudos: 95





	holes found in my armor

**Author's Note:**

> cw for: messy grieving in the form of passive self harm, general mental breakdown and dissociation, and nausea/vomiting. also referenced disordered eating/gender dysphoria.
> 
> for the context of the fic, akechi believes akira is dead, since this is set in canon, he's just fine. 
> 
> shout out to phi/yuurikatsuckme for betaing and making me finish this instead of scrapping it like 700 words in.

> __ Your body looks to me  
>  A way it never has before  
>  And is this what's making you so sad,  
>  And what you did this for?

Shooting Akira - no -  _ murdering _ Akira, does not feel like a victory. It doesn’t feel like a step towards his revenge and salvation.

It feels empty and repulsive. It feels like the burn of the acid in his throat as he dry heaves into the shitty toilet in his tiny bathroom in his cramped apartment. Every space is too small - it’s like he can’t get out of the interrogation room. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. Another violent shudder racks his body as he gags again. 

His hair is stringy with sweat, sticking to his forehead, and the fingers white knuckling the porcelain edge don’t bother to pull it away or back, and he isn’t sure they can. This shouldn’t have been this hard, he’s never been this bad - not even after his first mission for Shido. But killing someone in the metaverse, they just… disappear. Palace rulers and Mementos denizens simply evaporate. Just an hour ago, he’d seen Akira- Kurusu-san’s eyes go dead, saw the blood drip, drip, drip down his face before his head dropped with a wet thud on the table. 

Fuck. _ Fuck _ .

Eventually, he can finally stand on wobbly legs, wandering towards his bedroom and stripping everything from his body. He’s already disposed of his gloves on his way home, for the first time finding them itchy and restrictive and claustrophobic. Now, his palms are littered with indents from the way his nails fiercely dug into them, grounding himself with the sting. 

Akechi means to take a shower. But for the time being, he can’t seem to move back to the bathroom, another wave of nausea passing through him just at the thought. Instead, he turns slowly, cautiously towards the mirror in his room. 

Strange. It’s like looking at a picture - maybe some kind of abstract film. He’s looking through his eyes, but he can’t seem to place the boy in the mirror. Their scars match, and the hair is right enough, he supposes. With his make up sweated off, his complexion is uneven, and the bags under his eyes are so intense they could be some kind of weird fashion trend. The boy looking back at him feels so removed from what he’s crafted and built up. It’s the most intense dysphoria and dysmorphia he’s had since he was still being passed foster home to foster home. This body is not his. It looks different - and yet exactly the same. 

The hand in the reflection mirrors the movements of his own, drawing over the pallid skin of his torso, fingers lingering over the scars on his chest. His posture has deteriorated, hunching as he hopes to curl in, in, inward until he swallows himself whole. 

His hip bones and ribs jut out just slightly, just muscles on bone. It’s laughable. Strip away layer after layer, turn them into walls, and this is what’s left. Some sad excuse for a person. 

His eyes scan the frame in the mirror one more time before he resolves to shower. He needs to turn the stream on as hot as it will go, and scrub every inch of skin until it’s raw. It still won’t be enough - he’s never going to feel clean again and he knows it. How had he ever thought the clip of Okumura kicking it on national television prepared him for murdering Aki-  _ no _ \-  _ Kurusu _ ?

Beaten and broken enough, under the stream his thoughts wander to where he’s been avoiding all night. Akira is the only one who’s… gotten through to him, in so long. Of course he had to go and be the fucking leader of the Phantom Thieves. That really is just the way of Goro’s life, huh? He doesn’t  _ want _ Akira to be dead, and doesn’t  _ want _ to have it be at his hand. His apartment feels hollow and empty, and the thoughts he’d had, that maybe one day - one day he could bring A- Kurusu here. 

It was a stupid thought, he knew it was a stupid thought, and yet here he is, skin pink and stinging under the water, body racked with sobs bubbling out of his chest. He doesn’t know how to deal with regret, the new wave of nausea. He’s never questioned himself, ever since he saw the pale, lifeless form of his mother, he’s never questioned his drive to get back at the pitiful man that is his father. It’s always been worth it, always about him, damn whoever gets in his way, damn the collateral damage. Then he’d met Kurusu, and then Sakura-san and Okumura-san and suddenly, his actions became a painful, stark reality. 

Until then, he’d always considered his targets collateral. Stupid elites and researchers who don’t know how to stay out of the way. Each one just another disposable pawn. But, suddenly, he goes from knowing unsettling details about Wakaba Isshiki’s daughter, to seeing her. Seeing her struggling to acclimate still, but also bouncing back because she has a support system - and the Okumura girl too. 

Goro Akechi thinks he might be fucking jealous. 

Jealous! After all he’s done, and all he’s been through, he’s fucking jealous. 

There’s no surface in the world abrasive enough to scrub himself of these feelings. Instead, in some kind of weird absurdity, he shaves every inch of his body from the neck down, leaving countless slips and nicks in the way. Nothing intentional - never intentional - but certainly not being cautious with his movements by any means. He runs the razor over his skin again and again, until there’s nothing else he could possibly scrape away, even if he wanted to. 

At some point, he realizes the water is running cold. And he’s shivering.

The steam against the cold water is a strange sensation. Some kind of awful, mocking poetry about his life he supposes, meshing things that simply should not be together. Hollow, cracking laughter fills his ears, and belatedly it registers that the sound is coming from him. Perhaps it’s him that’s lost it this time. Wouldn’t that be funny? Maybe one of the little thieves have finally caved, maybe that’s why he’s reacting - he’s been bested by his own trick! That must be it, right? That he’s having some kind of mental shutdown. It’s the only explanation. 

Why is that more comforting to him than accepting that he may have been attached to Kurusu? The thought is jarring, out of left field. He doesn’t need to accept that - doesn’t need to accept anything. Damn it-  _ damn it _ .

He shuts the water off. 

For a moment, he considers sitting right there on the shower floor, considers sitting on the cold, hard ground until he dries off, dries up, shrivels away. Instead, he steps out of the shower, standing on his sorry excuse for a bath mat that’s just a dish towel, feeling the rivulets of water drip from his hair and travel down his raw, oversensitive skin.  _ What’s your secret, Detective Prince? How do you exfoliate, Akechi? How do you stay so slim? How is your skin so clear? You have such a soft, young face! Do you even wear makeup Akechi? _

He towels off. 

One more moment as he considers retching into the toilet again, it’s right there after all. His stomach is still churning despite being as empty as it possibly could be. But he’s exhausted, he doesn’t think he has the energy even for that, though he’s fairly certain sleep will not come either. Not that he deserves it. 

Quietly, he moisturizes his raw skin, despite the sting. Tomorrow, he has another TV appearance, where the capture and suicide of the leader of the Phantom Thieves will have just been announced. And he will make a statement against him, call him a coward. He will flaunt his assumptions about the age of the vigilantes, and he will call the death a cowardly tragedy. Desperately, he works to rebuild the walls that have crumbled tonight. The interviewers will rip him apart without his mask. 

All he can manage to put on are some soft, worn boxers before collapsing into the bed in the corner of his room. 

Idly, he wonders, now that Kurusu is out of the way, when Shido will dispose of him. How. It’s bound to happen, he can only simply hope that he gets there first. But even now, the fire is burning low. He’s tired - so, so fucking tired. This is all that’s been powering him for so long, but after tonight, he doesn’t want to do this anymore. Idly, his fingers trace the scars on his chest again. It feels dirty, and wrong, and attached to Shido. Seems he traded dysphoria for complete alienation from his body. But at least his chest is flat, right? At least his jaw is sharper, his voice deeper, his hips slimmer. At least, at least at least. 

The affirmations are tired. It gets harder, each day to believe them, to justify any of this. He’s so angry at the world, he’s always been angry, and this has always been the only way. But each stumbling, criminal confession sits heavy on his doubt. And now it’s snapped and collapsing under the weight of Kurusu’s head hitting the metal table. 

His mind wanders, now, to the bruises and cuts on every visible inch of skin. The way Akir-  _ Kurusu _ flinched when he moved, the hazy look in his eyes, no doubt from the drugs. He hadn’t even said a word, simply stared back at… back at Goro. Looked him in the eyes, lips forming a small, surprised ‘o’ as Akechi tried to monologue, to justify, to convince Kurusu and himself that this was the only way. He hadn’t flinched, hadn’t moved a muscle, even with a gun to his forehead, he’d simply let it happen. 

That brilliant boy, with so much fight in him, had just sat there. Just fucking sat there.

And Akechi, ever weak, almost thought about shooting the handcuffs off instead, defying Shido, taking him into hiding. They weren’t going to examine the body anyway, he could hide Akira at his apartment maybe, maybe he could still switch sides. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him. But as blood pooled around the guard on the floor, there was no coming back from it. He’s a murderer. Plain, clear as day. So he simply did as he was taught, did as he should have. And he shot the leader of the Phantom Thieves. 

Another laugh leaves him, weaker this time, quieter. And before long, the laughter twists and changes over to sobs. They’re rough, and his face feels gaunt and empty, like he’s taken all of the moisture out of it. 

He’s so worthless. He’s always known it, and now he can’t even muster the strength for his one cause, the one thing he’s dedicated himself to. Pathetic. All for a stupid boy with messy hair, who was never afraid to disagree with him, who made Akechi believe, fleetingly, that he could have better, that there wasn’t just  _ Akechi _ inside him, but Goro too. Akira with his stupid plush lips, stupid fake glasses, stupid competitive grin, the way he would bump his foot into Goro’s under the table at the jazz club, the way he danced his way into Goro’s life, attached there like a fucking parasite. The way he still invited Akechi out, even after he said he hated him. 

And now, Akira is...gone. 

More laughter bubbles up in his chest, but this time he can’t stop. Hysterical laughter and sobs become one in the same, wracking his entire body until sleep finally, finally wins. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments/kudos always appreciated! feel free to come bug me @hackedoracle on twitter !!
> 
> i've been wanting to write a more experimental character study for awhile and this was a good, cathartic write. specifically, i wanted to play with the idea of names/masks and personal disconnects.


End file.
